{"id":389,"date":"2018-12-04T17:55:28","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T22:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/?p=389"},"modified":"2018-12-04T18:00:17","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T23:00:17","slug":"anglo-saxon-elves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/2018\/12\/04\/anglo-saxon-elves\/","title":{"rendered":"Anglo-Saxon Elves"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a crosspost by L. A Smith from The Traveller’s Path<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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One of the intriguing questions about the Anglo-Saxons who lived in England in the Early Middle Ages revolves around their religious beliefs and mythologies. Pretty much all of what we know of these beliefs were written down by Christian monks, and so it\u2019s tricky to tease out the truth of that second-hand information.\u00a0Bede\u00a0<\/a>gives us some glimpses of their religion, but by the time he was writing his\u00a0Ecclesiastical History of the English People,<\/em>\u00a0completed around 731 AD, the religious practices of the pagan Anglo-Saxons had pretty much disappeared from England, so he was writing about beliefs and practices that were pretty much legend in his time.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Anglo-Saxons of the 7th century* were, of course, descended from the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who migrated to Britain after the Romans left the island defenceless in the 4th century. There is considerable discussion about whether these migrants came as conquerors or settlers, and the truth is likely a mix of the two.<\/span><\/p>\n

These groups of people came with their own set of beliefs and worldview that were distinct from those of the Celtic and Romano-British people who populated Britain at the time. They were Germanic people, and shared the rich heritage of the Norse and Germanic religions. They certainly were not Christians, but encountered a strong thread of Christian culture in Britain, a legacy of the Roman occupiers.<\/span><\/p>\n

So in trying to determine the religion and mythologies of the pagan Anglo-Saxons, scholars and historians look to the beliefs of their contemporary Germanic and Norse kin who lived on the Continent during the time they settled in Britain. But of course, their culture and beliefs slowly diverged from their Continental neighbours as time passed, and as they began to be integrated with the local population.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have the time or expertise to cover all of the Anglo-Saxon beliefs and mythology, but I thought I could give a brief overview of their mythologies about elves, seeing as I did some research on this in writing my first novel,\u00a0Wilding: Book One of the Traveller\u2019s Path<\/em>(coming early 2019).<\/span><\/p>\n

Much has been made of Tolkien\u2019s elves, and many scholars with far more expertise than I have written about Tolkien\u2019s understanding of the Saxon myths and religion and how he incorporated that into his Middle Earth (itself an Anglo-Saxon term) and his conception of elves.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have posted before<\/a>\u00a0about how the concept of \u201celves\u201d is a feature in many different cultures\u2019 mythologies across the world. In that post I wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Featured image:\u00a0Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing<\/em>, by William Blake (1786) This painting comes from the 18th century, but I think that it is actually not a bad depiction of Anglo-Saxon elves! Image from\u00a0sussexarch.org.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a crosspost by L. A Smith from The Traveller’s Path One of the intriguing questions about the Anglo-Saxons who lived in England in the Early Middle Ages revolves around their religious beliefs and mythologies. Pretty much all of what we know of these beliefs were written down by Christian monks, and so it\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,18],"tags":[81,82,83],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fairytales","category-speculation","tag-anglo-saxon-elves","tag-l-a-smith","tag-the-travellers-path"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":392,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions\/392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}